


the following (the previous) statement is false (is true).

by Parsley_and_Sage



Category: 1bitHeart (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Drabble Collection, Gen, Self-Esteem Issues, Spoilers, Suicide, is it truly angst?, though if it's written through nanashi's perspective, written at 6 am so if it's bad i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25875463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parsley_and_Sage/pseuds/Parsley_and_Sage
Summary: [major 1bitheart spoilers]Nanashi stares and ponders himself.Exactly how detatched does he consider Mikado from him? Is he “Nanashi,” or is “everything else”?That choice might just impact everything.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	the following (the previous) statement is false (is true).

**Author's Note:**

> damn these titles just get longer and longer (it was gonna be epimedides paradox but i thought this sounded cooler). there might be some confusion with the names, so just to clear it up:
> 
> in bad end, "nanashi" is only ever used to refer to future nanashi  
> nanase usually refers only to normal-end future nanashi  
> i know nanase's supposed to symbolic of how nanashi grows past being "a nameless program built to help others" but shhh it was confusing otherwise (rip).
> 
> tw: suicide, extreme self-loathing presented in a very happy manner, bad writing

The glamour comes off.

It makes sense, he thinks. Mikado came from the future, so Mikado must have been someone from his timeline. And Mikado always looked like him. From facial features and builds to personalities and hobbies, Mikado always resembled him, to the point strangers often mistook them for brothers rather than cousins.

Nanashi has no relatives named Mikado. In fact, him even having a cousin had come as a surprise.

A cousin eight years older than him.

Misane came eight years from the future.

The dots connect the moment Mikado shows his face—his real face, the one he’s worn (more or less the same, probably) for his twenty-three years of life. The one Nanashi’s seen in the mirror for over fourteen years. The one they share so easily.

The same smile, the same name.

“My name’s Yoshi Nanase, but you can call me Trash, Pest, Maggot, Garbage, Loser, Annoyance, Idiot…”

The same introduction.

And in those few seconds, Yoshi Nanase, fourteen years old, has a decision to make.

  
  
  
  


**bad end.**

It’s like staring in a mirror.

 _Yep, that’s me alright._ Even his brain acknowledges Mikado (Future Nanashi? Just Nanashi?) as just another him. The numbers he sees are all too familiar. He’s never been able to analyze himself, but if he did, he’s sure that the numbers correlating to _Mikado_ are the numbers correlating to _Nanashi,_ regardless of the time period.

 _Mikado_ is just _Nanashi._ If he knew, he doubted he would have praised him so easily. Of course, he knows now, so it doesn’t really matter. Regretting the past wastes time and energy.

He can simply hate Nanashi the same way he hates himself!

The thing is (was and always will be), the world is bright and glittering, full of flashing numbers and dizzying expanses of code. Ugliness doesn’t exist. Even if it did, he would only see the numbers building that ugliness up, and his numbers are never ugly. He’s learned to recognize “blond hair” as a certain string of numbers and “pale skin” as another, but he’s never really, truly seen it as anything but numbers.

He’s never really seen people as anything but elegant strings of numbers, either. To him, humanity is simply that: numbers.

And since his ability doesn’t extend to himself, he must not be human.

There’s plenty to love about the world, but nothing will ever come close as the beauty in people he sees. Flashy flowers, green grass, and avant-garde architecture; theme parks and festivals—children love those types of things, but they’re all second rate to him. Those that don’t possess _code_ are not _beautiful,_ that’s what he’s learned, because _code_ is the most beautiful thing in the world.

He doesn’t have any numbers attached to him, so he’s second-rate.

Right in front of his eyes, the bright pink numbers crawling up Nanashi’s form fade to the red-marked numbers on his skin.

In the end, his future self is just him. He’s ugly and second-rate, and not at all loveable. The same way one might pluck a pretty tulip or shred pieces of grass, his hands wrap around his own neck and _tighten._

_Would you jump off a building if somebody asked?_

_Well, I only have one life, so I’d have to think about it first. But if it were for the benefit or happiness of somebody else, I think I’d probably happily do it!_

For all of humanity—

_You practically asked, so I’ll deliver!_

Yoshi Nanase, twenty-three years old, commits suicide.

  
  
  
  


**normal end.**

He’s grown a lot.

That’s the first thing he notes. How he has to crane his head to look at himself; how he develops a habit for writing on himself, how his sense of fashion or favorite color hasn’t changed (oversized hoodies and a nice, cheerful pink), but he’s improved his BitPhone and cleaned up his look. It really points to one thing: he’ll grow a lot.

_Wow. I become this person._

He admires himself, a little bit. But that’s a super vain thing to do, so he kicks it to the side and stomps on it repeatedly until it assimilates into self-deprecation. The fact _he,_ a worthless piece of garbage, becomes _Mikado,_ the cool big bro he’s looked up to, sounds so impossible. He kind of still looks up to him.

It’s a little hard to process. If he squints closely at the numbers running up and down Mikado (Nanashi? Nanase?), he thinks he can pick a few things that will change, but for the most part, it feels like himself, like Nanashi. Course, he’ll never know for sure, but…

The future, if he makes it, looks bright. Brighter than his present, at least.

Does he hate him? he wonders. It’s hard to decide. Because he did look up to Mikado, who was nothing but kind to him from the moment they met, and even offered him refuge in his apartment despite knowing it was _Nanashi._ Since he’s him from the future, he’d know how he just oozes weirdness, past or present for future regardless. He took him in anyway.

Does he hate Nanase? It’s hard to decide. He likes Nanase, he likes him lots. He could never see him as Nanashi, the one that’s lesser than human. He can even make out the numbers flickering on his form.

Does Nanashi hate Nanase? It’s hard to decide. It’s him—a future him. And he kind of likes his style.

It’s like admiring a character in a game that acts too much like him, he thinks. Perhaps they’re not him, but they feel like him—like if they were in his situation, they’d act and do just as he would. He’s always felt for those types of characters. Even if they’re not slivers of spun numbers coalesced into something human, he likes them. They might be second-hand caricatures of something pretty, but they’re, in their own right, pretty enough.

Nanase doesn’t have to be pretty. The numbers surrounding him fade in and out, like they’re not too sure what to do. Nanashi likes him anyway.

(But not enough that he wouldn’t short-circuit him. Nanase’s not quite _human._ )

_Donating a limb or giving my life is kind of crossing a line. Since I only have one of those, I’d need a moment to weigh the pros and cons._

He got his moment.

_You’re worth more than trash like me, but you’ve got to be stopped somehow. So—_

Yoshi Nanase, fourteen years old, erases his future.

_Sorry, Misane._

  
  
  
  


**best end.**

A different version of him.

 _You’re not really me,_ he thinks, staring at Mikado (Nanashi? Nanase? Mikado?). There's the hair, the eyes, the curve of the jaw and the shift of his clothes, and there’s something else too, underneath it all. Like a string of numbers that look _wrong,_ it’s the subtlest things that aren’t quite _right._ The lilt of his voice; the crinkle of his eyes; a misplaced hand gesture—the way _Yoshi Nanase_ rolls off his tongue, filled so deeply with contempt, not even the following _but you can call me Pest, Maggot or Scum_ can do it justice.

He murmurs his own name under his breath. 

_Yoshi Nanase, but you can call me—_

It’s different, he thinks. It’s different, because the introduction goes all wonky in his brain, and all the wrong neurons connect.

_Nanashi._

He’s been spending too much time with Misane-chan, he thinks. Too much time with people who call him _Nanashi_ and not _Pest, Maggot,_ or _Scum,_ and he’s forgotten how unworthy he is for others to even consider him human. Or maybe forgotten isn’t the best term for it.

Because it doesn’t exactly feel right anymore, to insult himself so easily.

It hurts, just a little.

Why had he gone on that quest for friends? Misane-chan ordered him to, he remembers, because Misane-chan told him it would be good for him. She said, just a few, so why go so far? It's a puzzle he can’t figure out. He glances down at himself, wishing he could see himself the way he saw the world around him.

At the very least, he’d understand himself better. He tries to recall the reason.

Starting out, it was simply second-nature. Serving the whims of others felt natural, like an instinctive part of him he couldn’t stamp out, and he simply let it fester and carry him wherever. But something changed, after meeting Miumi and Natsukage and all the rest, and his motives slowly shifted.

Because slowly, he started having fun. Making friends became _fun._ Seeing them happy became _his_ happiness; solving their problems diminished his own; and seeing their smiles made his heart flutter with joy.

He liked the people around him, as more than just numbers stacked on top of other numbers. And slowly, as he understood others and saw just how varied, how flawed and lovely all of them were—

His heart expanded, and he began to like the world more and more.

That’s where the string of digits deviates, why the eye crinkles all wrong, and how his name flows so differently off Mikado’s tongue. He’s him, Yoshi Nanase, a future version of him from a world where he remained a shut-in and never truly got to see the faces under the numbers, the personalities that correlated with each bit of code. He’s Nanashi, but he’s not.

Not in the way that matters the most.

Maybe he hasn’t got a complete personality override. The world’s still a glittering, beautiful place, with glittering, beautiful people and their glittering, beautiful personalities, and it’s hard for him to consider himself a part of that world. Maybe he hasn’t got a complete personality override, but he's fine with that. What’s important is that the world isn’t all he chalked it up to be. What’s important is that he loves it still. The streets look different looking down than looking up, but they’re still pretty in all the important ways.

He wasn’t quite right about the world, so there’s the smallest smidgen of a chance that maybe—just maybe—he’s not quite right about himself either.

So maybe—just maybe—he can love himself.

And if he can love this flawed, glittering world; if he can love himself, the most flawed of them all; then he can love Mikado with it. Because the world’s big enough, bright enough, and flawed enough for a different Nanashi.

“What will you do with the future, past me?”

The answer’s obvious. He’ll save it. And while he’s at it—

_I’m not one bit anymore!_

Yoshi Nanase, age fourteen, saves himself, too.

**Author's Note:**

> was this a convoluted attempt at trying to puzzle out how nanashi sees mikado and how making friends gives nanashi "the thing he's missing" (despite the game explaining quite clearly how)? yes.
> 
> anyway i have concluded that the message of 1bitheart is not just "self-hate is bad" but "you can't truly love others without loving yourself" and i think that's great bye


End file.
